The emotions that envelop us while looking at art often channel that inner “id, the pure, emotional, instinctual drive that relishes the beautiful, the cherished, the prized. Artist Robert Mars captures and encapsulates this instinctual desire in his work by exploring the notions around the idea of the adored ‘objet d’art’. Mars’ works fuse fashion with contemporary pop culture, infusing both with a sharp yet nuanced edge. CONTINUE READING . . .

Bruce Helander - Mars Landing

Artist Robert Mars’ new series of handsome, graphics-inspired images, opening April 13 at DTR Modern in SoHo, offer a compelling and exciting visual dialogue that takes its DNA from iconic imagery in American popular culture. Like the pioneer inventors before him, particularly Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Warhol, Mars discovers, researches and manipulates pop imagery into his own recognizable format, which utilizes iconic American symbols, particularly from advertising and film. CONTINUE READING . . .

Donald Kuspit - American Irony

At first glance, Robert Mars’ imagery brings to mind Warhol: both have rendered Marilyn Monroe numerous times, using her photographic representation as a point of departure. But where Warhol seems to idolize her glamour, as though it was inherently appealing—who could resist her beauty, however much a Hollywood fiction, a manufactured presence rather than a “speaking likeness,” as a genuine portrait is supposed to be--Mars associates it with Dollar Elegance and Luxury, a work in which the shapely dollar sign is more to the seductive point than the fragment of Monroe’s face subsumed in it. CONTINUE READING . . .

Eleanor Heartney - Between Memory and Desire

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Today, it seems he was off by a measure of magnitude. On social media, images and commentaries whiz by incessantly while the Big Story of the day is already old news by the time it hits the headlines. “Friends” multiply while real relationships stagnate. Instantaneous “liking” replaces more protracted experiencing. Living at this accelerated pace takes its toll on organisms designed for a slower time. Which may be why there is such a fascination today with the vanishing world of mid century America. The popularity of retro fashion and furniture, the TV series Mad Men, and the Golden Age of Hollywood is symptomatic of a larger sense of loss. CONTINUE READING . . .